Alexandre Pouget is a full Professor at the

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...

in the department of basic neurosciences.

Background and education

He received his undergraduate education at the

École normale supérieure (Paris) The – PSL (; also known as ENS, , Ulm or ENS Paris) is a ''grande école'' in Paris, France. It is one of the constituent members of Paris Sciences et Lettres University (PSL). Due to its selectivity, historical role, and influence within F ...

, before moving to the

Salk Institute The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California. The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine; among th ...

in 1988 to pursue a PhD in computational neuroscience in

Terry Sejnowski Terrence Joseph Sejnowski (; born 13 August 1947) is the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory and is the director of the Crick-Jacobs center for theoretic ...

's laboratory. After a postdoc at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

with John Schlag in 1994, he became a professor at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...

in 1996, then at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

in the Brain and Cognitive Science department in 1999 before moving to the

in 2011.

Memberships, editorial activities, and awards

Pouget was awarded th
Carnegie Prize in Brain and Mind Sciences
in 2016. He is the author of more than 100 papers and the editor of one book. He co-founded the

Computational and Systems Neuroscience ''Computational and Systems Neuroscience'' (COSYNE or CoSyNe) is an annual scientific conference for the exchange of experimental and theoretical/computational approaches to problems in systems neuroscience. It is an important meeting for computati ...

conference in 2004 with

Anthony Zador Anthony M. Zador is an American neuroscientist and the Alle Davis Harris Professor of Biology and Chair of Neuroscience at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He is a co-founder, in 2004, of the Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE) confe ...

. In 2016, he co-founded the

International Brain Laboratory The International Brain Laboratory (IBL) is a collaborative research group that aims to develop the first global model of decision making in mice. In its first phase, IBL members are recording 100,000's of neurons across virtually all brain structur ...

with Zachary Mainen and

Michael Hausser Michael A. Häusser is a British scientist who is professor of Neuroscience, based in the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research at University College London (UCL). Education Hausser was educated at the University of Oxford where he was awar ...

, the first international

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

-like collaboration in systems neuroscience.

Research interests

His research focuses on general theories of representation and computation in neural circuits with a strong emphasis on neural theories of probabilistic inference. This approach is built on the notion that knowledge in the brain takes the form of probability distributions and new knowledge is acquired via probabilistic inference in contrast to the more classical approach to rationality that relies on pure logic. This allows robust, sometimes optimal, computations in the presence of uncertainty, which applies to almost all real-life situations. He is currently deploying this framework to a wide range of topics including olfactory processing, spatial representations, sensory-motor transformations, multisensory integration, perceptual learning, attentional control, visual search and decision making.

Movies

Alexandre Pouget is featured in Jean-Stephane Bron's movi
'The brain'
'Cinq nouvelles du cerveau', 2022).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pouget, Alexandre Living people Year of birth missing (living people) French neuroscientists Academic staff of the University of Geneva Salk Institute for Biological Studies people